Kausfiles

Monthly Archives: April 2010

The Trouble With “Local Control”: Ruben Navarrette of the San Diego Union-Trib argues that, for all the high-profile rhetoric from President Obama and his education secretary about getting rid of bad teachers–talk that’s agitated the National Education Association–the fine print of the administration’s proposed No Child Left Behind revisions puts the unions back in the driver’s seat by “rolling back the involvement of the federal government in favor of more local control”:

You remember local control. That’s the governing principle that essentially handed the power over the system to teachers unions because they contribute so much money to the campaigns of labor-friendly school board members. The unions in turn put the job security of their members ahead of the educational well-being of students, and thus helped put our public schools in bad shape. You see, local control isn’t the solution; it’s one of the problems.

I’ve been arguing that Obama’s national Democratic party is less beholden to the unions than our state Democratic party. That’s true. But it still may be a little like arguing that the Mark Sanford is less creepy than John Edwards. … 1:02 A.M.

Teachers’ unions = layoff by seniority. In average districts, that just means losing lots of good teachers, instead of losing the least effective teachers. But in big cities like New York, where there’s been an influx of young, idealistic Teach for America types, it’s a tragedy. The best get laid off while mediocre ed school graduates from the 70s teach your children. … What if you tried to run a baseball team and had to lay off by seniority as opposed to performance? … P.S.: It’s not as if school districts have to choose between layoffs-entirely-by-seniority and layoffs-entirely-by-merit. It would be easy to devise a system in which everyone who was an “OK” teacher got laid off by seniority, but the worst 10% got laid off first. But that deal would never be negotiated because today’s teachers’ unions (unlike the old self-disciplining ‘professional’ teachers’ unions) seem to exist to protect the worst 10%. … 7:05 P.M.

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More on Unions–The Too Little, Too Late Problem: Even when unions eventually agree to necessary concessions, the tooth-pulling process of negotiation often results in a fix that’s too little, too late–and that cuts only the minimum necessary, leaving no margin for error or unforeseen events (like recessions). … Taxpayers who have followed the fortunes of General Motors and Chrysler are all too familiar with this phenomenon. But the same thing has happened in Los Angeles–where the city kept giving raises and adding jobs even as a recession loomed. When the downturn hit and revenues dropped, it took a year to negotiate cuts with the municipal unions. Now the city is up against it, facing the prospect of huge abrupt job cuts–and proposing a 28% utility rate hike to milk extra revenue from hard-pressed residents. … Phil Willon reports. … 7:23 P.M.

A generous item on Calbuzzabout my attempts to speak to the California Democratic party at its upcoming convention. … If they want to endorse Sen. Boxer, fine. But why bother to declare her two opponents not “viable” and rule them out beforehand? I’ll be on the ballot regardless. The main effect of the party’s semi-authoritarian, Iraq-like decree seems to be to prevent me from speaking to the convention. Are they afraid someone might listen? I didn’t realize Boxer was that insecure about her prospects. … 1:27 P.M.